Email Lists - Email Marketing Run Amok? (It Can Be Bad For Your Business)
Even if you have no interest and don't have a business (perhaps you don't even know what that is), if you have email, you have experienced the nastier side. You've probably even seen the ads for email address lists that provide thousands-or even millions-of email addresses for pocket change. Did you ever wonder how anyone could come up with all these addresses?
You may be sure of just one thing: in the event the price is not expensive, these aren't opt-in lists. Instead, these enormous lists are loaded with “harvested” email addresses. They may be comparable to a list of street addresses chosen in the telephone book.
Mainly, the addresses are harvested from forums, student or membership lists, newsgroups, message boards, web logs, along with other areas where people gather to swap information. They don't understand their addresses sold on the open market and are being gathered up. And they surely didn't request to have their inboxes polluted with junk.
Harvesting email addresses is legal. But it's widely considered unethical. You won't go to jail or pay a fine. However, you could damage your company, maybe irreparably. The possible outcomes for violating the unwritten rule about no email harvesting range to having your business from losing your ISP blacklisted to losing your domain name.